Come fly with me

Posted on September 19, 2013 by The Daily Cure

When I started this blog, I included a category called “Transitions.” The idea was to write every time we went back and forth between Italy and France. The passage through the Alps is always stunning and serves, really and metaphorically, to remind me that Transitions-R-Us, that as living beings on a living planet we are always in flux, passing from one state to the next, experiencing both the breathtaking vistas and the long, dark tunnels along the way.

I’ve written about the Mont Blanc tunnel, the crops beside the road, the baguette that rides on the dash for the entire 7 hour journey and the sheer majesty of the peaks. But there’s an aspect of the coming and going that I’ve never showed you, because it would have been impossible. I am passionate about hitting the proverbial road and going where it takes you. But I’m also riveted to the sky. To shifting clouds. To airplanes passing overhead. To the idea that all around us is an airy connective tissue of cloud and climate that has seen it all. A car is great. But what if I had wings? What if instead of going through Monte Bianco, I could fly over it? That would be my dream.

Obviously, outside my fantasies, it will never happen. But today, I saw this very special view of the French Alps, and I felt that I’d come close. I have to share it with you:

Thanks to my dear husband for sharing it with me.

Posted in AROUND US, FRANCE, ITALY, TRANSITIONS | Tagged , , , | 10 Comments

An Island of Elba “Wish You Were Here”

Posted on September 1, 2013 by The Daily Cure

20130901-190956.jpgThe last achingly beautiful breath of summer just whispered in my ear.

Posted in AROUND US, ITALY | 3 Comments

Color Story #12: Brown is the new black

Posted on August 14, 2013 by The Daily Cure

Well, I don’t know about you, but for us it’s been “one of those summers.” Long, beautiful, hot, (at times) stormy and punctuated by curveballs. There’s been a lot to take care of, tend to, fix, arrange…a lot of emotions to be felt…loss, sadness, elation, hope. There’s been work of every description. The kind that pays. The kind that rewards you with a clean load of laundry. The kind that requires delicacy, stillness and a careful tongue. All kinds. So blogging has been a luxury. As have walking, daydreaming, knitting…those activities that need time to unwind themselves and us with them.

B1

A couple days ago, the dog we are babysitting—we call him “Doggy-in-law”—said “Enough is enough. It’s time for a walk.” He was quite right, of course, so we headed for the fields. I showed you the state of the fields in my last post, so you can see that the set designer has dramatically changed the look of the stage. Weedy chaos has been replaced by neat, brown clods of dirt. They have always looked to me like the enormous curved backs of benevolent, sleeping animals. Warm in the sun, concealing a beating heart.

B2

B6Doggy-in-law was thrilled and flattered to see that it was all the same color he is, brown being the new black, and all that. He scampered around running up and down, this way and that, inspecting scents and droppings and buzzing winged things. I tried to capture his noble “look” but he would not oblige, preferring instead to present his hindquarters posed just-so next to the sunflowers in the second field.

B5 B3

I’d hoped to show them to you facing the sun, but I’ve let too much time slip by. They are heavy with seeds and most of them hang down forlornly. But still, cliché that they are, they are lovely to behold. And so concluded our walk.

Then it was back to the work at hand. Back to the calling, tugging exigencies of life. Back and back and back…

Have a lovely day, one and all.

B4BROWN BLACK

Posted in AROUND US, COLOR, FRANCE | Tagged , , , , , | 11 Comments

Lying fallow

Posted on August 2, 2013 by The Daily Cure

I love old words. Or words you just hear in a certain context. Here’s one: Fallow. Isn’t that a pretty word?

Walking behind our house when we got here, I realized that the field which is almost always planted in grain or sunflower or rapeseed, is lying fallow this summer. In fifteen years of coming here, I’ve never seen it like this—overrun with weeds and butterflies and poppies—a totally new rebel world. I love it! Day before yesterday they mowed it down (activity is afoot), so I’m glad I caught it when I did.

FIELD 4 FIELD 7

When you first start the walk, along the railroad tracks, the field rises gently behind you like an Andrew Wyeth painting, with splotches of red—poppies—splattered against field-color. It buzzes with life.

If you observe the poppies at close range and squint, it’s just a full-on red story. Red red red. I love that. Did Dior ever make a Poppy lipstick? Did Chanel? Forget your fire engines and your blood. It’s all about Poppy!

FIELD 2

I don’t know what this weed is, do you? It is everywhere. And because we are so close to this field, it virtually dominates what thrives in our yard too. When we got here, I had to hack through a jungle of this stuff to find my flowers…it was like the end of the Secret Garden when Mary succeeds in finding what lies beneath all those years of neglect and nature’s unfettered enthusiasm. Some grain, not ready to call it quits, reseeded itself —lone civilized stragglers crashing a party.

FIELD 5

FIELD 3The fallow field abuts another field planted in sunflowers. When I took these pictures the flowers were still green. They are a million suns now. I’ll show you soon. I’d better hurry, before it’s too late…

FIELD 6FIELD 1

Sometimes we need to lie fallow too. At least our minds do. They need to be still enough to be overrun with organic, unguided thoughts. Il dolce far niente. I’m working on that, but the big existential farmer has other plans…he’s doing some deep plowing. Work to be done, he says. Stop that laziness…

Have a lovely day doing—or not doing—whatever…

Posted in AROUND US, FRANCE | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Once upon a time a plum tree

Posted on August 1, 2013 by The Daily Cure

Once upon a time there was a plum tree. She was old. No one knew exactly how many rings she had, and she wasn’t telling. She watched a family grow—one generation following the next. She watched grandchildren come and cultures mix. She bore fruit and fruit and fruit. Her arms hung heavy and lovingly over wading pools and chairs made of reclaimed barn wood. Over adolescent tears and emptied bottles of Chablis. She never said no. She always said, “Come…”

PLUM 5 PLUM 7

She was graceful when other things around her weren’t. She rose up in three trunks, triplet sisters, me myself and I, that split and went their own way not a foot from the ground. In spring she was dressed in white. Paris runways couldn’t outdo her. In the summer she made so many plums they didn’t know what to do with them. She was the dove’s best friend.

PLUM 8

PLUM 6

A few days ago, a wind rose up. Too heavy and gray and strong for her. It bent her down. It mocked her heavy fruit. It even used her own fruit to undo her. One of the trunks snapped. Crack! Down. Done for. She stood one more night. But the winds came again. They and the sustained drought were too much for her. Funny how the thing you need, can also be the thing that finishes you. Finally a storm! Finally rain! Water! A rush of fresh air! But it was too much, and down she went.

WIND WIND 2 PLUMS PLUM 2

She leaves an empty space. An oddly grieving family. It was just a tree…but is there such a thing as “just a tree”? Of course, not.  The plum will be sorely missed. Time takes so long to make things, then it doesn’t give them back.  But, it does give something back. In her place there will be a cherry one day soon. And next door another plum for company. The dove sits on the fence looking at the neatly sawed remains philosophically, cooing her condolences. Patient. Knowing. Waiting.

We miss the tree, this beautiful plum, that was, of course, both a tree and a metaphor. I’ve kept two discs from the trunk to remind me. One, of the tree. And one, of everything else.

TREE MEMORY

Posted in AROUND US, FRANCE | Tagged , , | 10 Comments

That says it all

Posted on July 1, 2013 by The Daily Cure

Excellent interactive feature in the New York Times today about the use of hand gestures in Italian communication. Too good to be described, so I’ll just give you the link: A Short Lexicon of Italian Hand Gestures. And here’s the related article with video.

If you’d like something further on the subject, to place on your shelf of reference materials, or to instruct you in the ways of communicating without words, I recommend this charming book, which I’ve linked to the English translation at Amazon.com:

gesto

Posted in ITALY, THEY SAY | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

The Castle Cats and Memories of Delia

Posted on June 5, 2013 by The Daily Cure

Last week, while taking my walk, I decided to zoom around inside the Castello Sforzesco to see what was up. I often go through it, imagining what court life must have been like confined, as it was, so rigidly to a small finite space defined by high walls, enclosed gardens, and that almost featureless broad expanse in the middle, while pestilence, war and poverty raged on all sides. At least that’s how I imagine it. Was boredom rampant? Depression? Was finery enough to keep everyone in their right mind? I seriously doubt it.  Intrigues and conspiracies had to have sprung from a high degree of boredom.

CASTLE CAT 1

But nobility is thankfully a thing of the past. There are no brocade skirts sweeping along the Castle’s paths. No armored knights clanking here and there. Just flocks of tourists, the occasional artisanal event (weather permitting), fields of poppies and an ever-growing population of stray cats.

CASTLE CAT 2

I’m allergic to cats and have always given them wide berth. But I love to look at them, and I feel an affinity with their solitary, self-indulgent ways. I respect their independent minds, their shifting moods, their unpredictable twists and turns. I love their ability to ignore me completely, and to keep their balance when the odds are against it.

CASTLE CAT 4

The Castle Cats rule the grounds, yet they keep to themselves in the areas that seem to suit them best. They hunt and sunbathe inside the now empty moat. They hide under the bushes, taking shade. They walk along decrepit beams and appropriately named catwalks left over from the Middle Ages, remnants of the systems that operated the drawbridges and accessed the higher reaches of the towers.

They sleep in and amongst the old stone caskets that are strewn in one corner of the castle. Someone, a “woman of a certain age”—I’ve seen her once—comes to feed them. And I believe it is she who has constructed little houses for them out of vegetable crates covered with impermeable black garbage bags to protect them from the rain.

CASTLE CAT 5

I wonder what it is about older women and cats. When does that love between them become a driving force? When does a woman decide that she’s better off with cats than with the company of other human beings? When does she start to speak their language and they hers? Like a witch with her familiars, this woman wanders among her feline friends, whispering to them in their own language. They rub against her legs, eager to be close to her. From me and my camera, they only run away.

I once knew a cat who “adopted” me. Her name was Delia. At least that’s what I called her. When she first wandered into my yard, she was young and slightly underfed. I fed her. We understood each other somehow. We always stayed outdoors where the fresh air did away with my allergic reactions, and she weaved in and out of my legs, mewing and rubbing her check against my jeans. Her visits were brief and loving, but she came to visit me almost every day after our first encounter. Then I moved away. I miss her.

It’s a strange and meaningful experience to be chosen by an animal. Beautiful. I couldn’t resist it. Even though I’d never been a cat lover, Delia made me love her. I wonder, in the case of the Castle Cats, if the Woman who cares for them chose them, or if they chose her. You might say it’s all about the food, but I don’t think so. There’s something else going on there.  I don’t suppose it matters much. They have each other. And that’s the way they all like it.

Many of you have animals in your homes and farms. I’ll be very interested to hear what you have to say about it all.

Have a lovely day wherever you are.

CASTLE CAT 3

Posted in AROUND US, ITALY | Tagged , , | 18 Comments

Postcard #20: A little silliness to raise the spirits

Posted on May 29, 2013 by The Daily Cure

[With the incessant rain, cold and greyness, a little silliness is definitely in order. That, and the unavoidable cliché: HERE’S LOOKING AT YOU KID!]

LOOKING AT YOU FRONT POSTCARD FIAT BACK copy

Have a lovely day. I hope you are all squinting your eyes against a warm, benevolent sun. (Odd, as I browse the last postcards, I realize that it was raining when I posted #19 as well.)

Posted in ITALY, POSTCARDS | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

The salad days are now

Posted on May 28, 2013 by The Daily Cure

The expression that’s playing around my head today is that lovely turn of phrase “the salad days.”

Shakespeare wrote these words in 1606, in his play Antony and Cleopatra. A mature Cleopatra is thinking back to the days of her immature romance with none other than Julius Caesar, when this exquisite turn of phrase springs from her lips:”…My salad days, / When I was green in judgment, cold in blood…” What I love is that almost scientific line-up of descriptors—”salad,” “green” and “cold”— that conjure up with perfect linguistic freshness and unflinching observation the essence of youth. (Cold? Who would have thought? And yet it’s true.) In fact, Wikipedia goes on to tell us, “The phrase became popular only from the middle of the 19th century, coming to mean ‘a period of youthful inexperience or indiscretion’.”

Once the salad days are past, we are tempted to do everything we can, if not to regain them, to at least recapture their green, cold, crisp vitality. Perhaps one of the best ways—and it is now the season—is to eat that which we wish to be. I recently spotted these leafy wonders at my neighborhood fresh fruit and veg vendor, and was amazed by the variety of shape and color. This is not an exhaustive collection of what I saw—there was more—but perhaps it’s enough to inspire some youthful, frolicsome foraging.

SALAD 1 SALAD 2 SALAD 3 SALAD 4 SALAD 5 SALAD 6 SALAD 7 SALAD 8 SALAD 9

Varieties of radicchio, insalata romana, soncino, catalogna, erbette and cicoria—not in that order.

Posted in IN SEASON, ITALY | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

The favolosa—fabulous—bean

Posted on May 27, 2013 by The Daily Cure

Before I moved to Italy, the only thing I new about fava beans was that Hannibal Lecter, Anthony Hopkin’s character in The Silence of the Lambs, had eaten them “with [someone’s] liver and a nice chianti.” Eww, how grizzly is that? It put me off them for a while. But when I got here, I saw how cute and how-very-like lima beans they seemed. I’m a Southern girl, and I missed lima beans, so I gave them a very enthusiastic try. Unfortunately, I was breast-feeding my first child at the time, and I didn’t realize (or I had conveniently put aside the fact) that eating such foods might give her colic. Ow! She cried all night for days after those fava beans, in such a tortured state was her tiny gut. Poverina. And we slept nary a wink—poveri noi—but I guess it served me right. I hadn’t followed the pediatrician’s instructions to the bean.

IMG_5396

Fast-forward thirteen years, and until last Tuesday, I’d never repeated the experiment. It seemed time, and the market was full of them. I remembered that they tasted nothing like lima beans, but I hadn’t remembered quite how beautiful they are in real life. The pods are plump, more generous than borlotti pods or pea pods. And when you open them, you understand why. Inside the bulbous casing, the beans lie nestled in a cushiony bed. Yes: it’s actually as if some agricultural sprite had lined each one with foam rubber. (We think we’re so smart, but Nature always gets there first.)

IMG_5398

Enough about how the beans look. It’s time to get to the taste. They are ever so slightly bitter; but, then again, you probably already knew that. Bitter in a nice way, in a lovely way. In a way that you tolerate, then like, then fall in love with. Hence my postpartum over-indulgence and my innocent baby’s suffering. They are, to be sure, an acquired taste, but as is often the case with acquired tastes, once acquired, they’re the subject and the object of passion, not merely of passing interest.

My reacquaintance with the fava went like this: An Italian chef  I adore who goes by the name Giorgione (i.e., his name is Giorgio, but he’s a very large man, hence the suffix), prepared them recently on his TV show with nothing more than crumbled pecorino, olive oil and a grating of black pepper. Let me repeat:

1. A handful of tender, small just-shelled fava beans, uncooked (mine were slightly too large, but next time I’ll know)
2.  A crumbling of the best pecorino you can get your hands on (Giorgone used a fresh pecorino, I used a slightly aged variety) but we are not talking the store-bought pecorino romano you grate over pasta. Go to your local cheese-person and ask his or her opinion. Experiment.
3. Olive oil. Something yummy. Not an insipid, pale cooking oil.
4. Sea salt (only if your cheese is of the very fresh variety and therefore less salty. As I used a slightly seasoned cheese, I added no salt whatsoever).
5. Pepper (grind away).

IMG_5387

Toss that all together, and I am telling you that you are in for a treat. The best kind of treat. The kind that requires very little labor, no cooking and a sublime mixture of ingredients that are each heavenly in their own right. But don’t eat too much, the uncooked beans might provoke a musical reaction if consumed out of moderation. (Best to eat them in the company of people you love who happen to love you. But, isn’t that always the best condition for dining?)

IMG_5389

NOTE: I’ve linked Giorgone’s name (in the above paragraph) to his Facebook page. If you understand Italian, I hope you enjoy it. If you don’t, I believe there are English translations available. In any case, his recipes are interesting and inspiring because they’re all based on what he finds fresh in his garden. Obviously, he’s close personal friends with pancetta and guanciale as well, but you have to love his dedication to the good things in garden and life.

Posted in IN SEASON, ITALY | Tagged , , | 10 Comments